Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Binge Drinking


Gin Lane

There's been a lot of discussion about the harmful effects of the 'recent phenomenum of binge drinking' in the UK. When I was younger increasing crime levels were blamed on poverty and social exclusion. Now we're supposed to believe Britain has become a more violent place because of mobile phone theft and people getting tanked up on a Saturday night.

It doesn't seem to matter how rich or poor people are; too little money and they take to the streets to steal, too much money and they spend it on alcopops and stamp on each other's heads. The lesson should be that non economic factors are the key to rising crime levels. Urban Lefties don't like that kind of thinking. The conclusion would be that people are responsible for their own actions and that reactionary, right wing institutions and concepts might be more relevant to living in a decent society than we've been led to believe over recent years.

Anyway, referring to the 'recent phenomenum of binge drinking' is, of course, nonsense. Brits have been getting off their face and fighting for millennia. This is fine be me. One glance at Europe and its cafe culture suggests that a lifetime of largely alcohol free social interaction inevitably leads to an interest in golden shower pornography and an appreciation of Depeche Mode and David Hasselhoff records. Balls to that.

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